A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (92 page)

6. Middle East Watch, Human Ri, hts in Iraq (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 103-104.

7. The Export-Import Bank discontinued a short-term loan program when Iraqi borrowers failed to meet repayment schedules, but in 1987, under pressure from the Reagan administration, it resumed short-term lending guarantees, setting up a $200 million revolving fund for the purchase of U.S. products.

8. See, for example, a 1985 Amnesty International report documenting the execution of some 300 civilians in one town; Amnesty International's January 1988 press release, "Iraqi Security Forces' Use of Rat Poison, or Thallium, Against Political Opponents"; Elaine Sciolino, "The Big Brother: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein," New York Times, February 3, 1985, sec. 6, p.16.

9. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, p. 41, quoting Al-Iraq, September 13, 1983.

10. The Nixon administration ordered a moratorium on chemical weapons production in 1969 in the wake of public outcry at the use of napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam.Yet after several years of lobbying by Reagan administration officials, the Pentagon secured funding for new chemical weapons production in 1985 in order to modernize and replace aging stockpiles. At that time it was generally estimated that the United States possessed approximately 30,000 tons of chemical weapons (with some estimates as high as 35,(100-45,000 tons), the vast majority of which were declared obsolete by the Department of Defense. See Michael Weisskopf, "Reagan Seeks to End Chemical-Weapons Ban; Superior Soviet Nerve-Gas Stocks Cited," l'Vashington Post, March 1, 1985, p. A6; Bill Keller, "U.S. Preparing New Production of Nerve Gases," Veiv York Titnes, August 11, 1985, sec. 1, p. 1; and Steven R. Bowman,"IB941129: Chemical Weapons Convention: Issues for Congress," Congressional Research Service Issue Brie/, September 20, 2000.The Geneva Protocol of 1925 bans "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases" It does not ban the production or stockpiling of chemical weapons. In April 1997 the U.S. Senate did ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Complementing the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the CWC does ban the production and stockpiling of chemical weapons and commits signatories to dismantling chemical weapons and their production facilities by 2007, unless the parties agree to extend the deadline- U.S. implementation has been delayed by debates over disposal methods. A recent independent analysis was pessimistic that the United States would complete its chemical weapons disposal by the 2007 deadline. As of May 2001, according to the U.S. Army's "Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization" website, over 24,000 tons of chemical weapons remain to be disposed of out of the original national stockpile.

11. Anthony H. Cordesman, Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East (London: Brassey's, 1991), p. 89; W Seth Carus, "The Genie Unleashed: Iraq's Chemical and Biological Weapons Program," Washington Institute for Near East policy paper no. 14, p. 3.

12. Attributed to Lt. Gen. Mahid Abd Al-Roshid, Commander of the Iraqi Army's Seventh Corps, circa 1985. CIA,"Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program: More Self-Reliant, More Deadly." A Research Paper, August 1990, p. 3.

13. Cordesman, Weapons sf Mass Destruction in the Middle East, p. 92.

14. Statement read by the Department of State spokesman John Hughes, March 5, 1984, cited by the Department of State, Bulletin, April 1984, p. 64.

15. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), p. 239.

16. The 1987 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report attached this resolution.The UN sent fact-finding teams to the Gulf in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988, and each time they concluded that Iraq had used chemical weapons. By September 1988 the teams had made seven separate findings of Iraqi use. Yet the United States extended diplomatic relations with Iraq only months after the first finding in 1984. In July 1988 Iraq finally admitted use but claimed that Iran began the practice and that it was only self-defense. "We believe that every nation has a right to protect itself from invasion.The means might be controversial-there are differences to this matter from different angles,' Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz said. "Sometimes such weapons were used in the bloody war, by both sides. It was a very complicated, bloody conflict" Serge Schme- mann, "Iraq Acknowledges Its Use of Gas but Says Iran Introduced It in War;' New York Times, July 2, 1988, p. A3. In August 1988 the UN Security Council passed a resolution sponsored by the UK, West Germany, Italy, and Japan-and not by the United States-condemning chemical weapons use in the IranIraq war and for the first time stating that "appropriate and effective measures" would be taken if the weapons were used again.

17. David Segal, "The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1988, p. 956. Even as late as 1988, this article presented the choice as one "between the possible adverse effects of offending world opinion and the certain adverse effects of being overrun by Iranian soldiers."

18. The UN fact-finding experts found chemical weapons use in 1984 and 1985 but did not single out Iraq by name. In 1986, 1987, and 1988, they explicitly blamed Iraq. The fact-finders began to lose faith. In their report of May 6, 1987, they wrote: "We all firmly believe that, at the specialist level, we have done all we can to identify the types of chemicals and chemical weapons being used in the Iran-Iraq conflict. If, in the future, a further mission is requested, then we will of course all be ready to respond. However, we now feel that technically there is little more that we can do that is likely to assist the United Nations in its efforts to prevent the use of chemical weapons in the present conflict. In our view, only the concerted efforts at the political level can he effective" Report of the Secretary General to the UN Security Council, S/18852, May 8, 1987, pp. 13-19, 25-31; emphasis added.

19. It had just emerged that Reagans national security adviser, Robert McFarlane, had traveled to Teheran on an Irish paisport, carrying a Bible inscribed by President Reagan to the ayatollah. The McFarlane story wculd prove to be only a hint of the mischief under way in the White House, where with the aid of NSC staffer Oliver North, the Reagan administration had sold arms to the Iranians throagh an intermediary and then diverted the profits to Nicaragua's antiCommunist contra resistarce.

20. Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, p. 133.

21. Ibid., pp. 16-17, citing the Sun (London), September 8,1981.

22. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, War in the Persian Gulf The US. 'Fakes Sides, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 1987, S. I'rt. 100-160, p. 19.

23. Haywood Rankin, "Travels with Galbraith-Death in Basra, Destruction in Kurdistan," U.S. government memorandum, September 27, 1987, p. 16.

24. Ibid., p. 3.

25. Ibid., p. 6.The Iranian authorities extended this revelry even to foreigners, sending a telegram of congratulations to the family of a German journalist who was killed at the front.

26. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, War in the Persian Gulf p. 15.

27. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (or 1987, report submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 100th Cong., 2nd less., 1987, p. 1172.

28. "Iraqis Repulse 'Karabala X,"' confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad to Secretary of State George Shultz, April 27, 1987, p. 2; reproduced as 00423 in National Security Archive, ed., Iraggate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War (1980-1994) (Alexandria,Va.: Chadwyck-Healey, 1995).

29. "The Internal Situation in Iraq," cable from the joint Chiefs of Staff to the Defense Intelligence Agency, August 4, 1987, p. 2; reproduced as 00453 in National Security Archive, ed., Iraqgate.

30. Loren Jenkins, "Iranians Detail Charges of Gas Warfare;' Washington Post, May 11, 1987, p. Al.

31. Alan Cowell,"Iraqis Are Facing a Growing War from Within," New York Times, September 22, 1987, p. A6.

32. Meeting with Northern Bureau members and directors of the Ba'ath Party headquarters in the northern governorates; tape is dated May 26, 1988, but Middle East Watch believes the context indicates it was in fact recorded in 1987. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, p. 349.

33. Even after an Iraqi warplane fired a missile into the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf in 1987, killing thirty-seven American sailors, the Reagan administration accepted Baghdad's claim that it was a "mistake"

34. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, p. 105.

35. Interview with Sirwa, a Kurd living in England, in Sheri Laizer, Martyrs, Traitors and Patriots: Kurdistan After the Gulf War (London: Zed Books, 1996).

36. Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), p. 137.

37. Ibid., pp. 137-138.

38. Patrick E. Tyler, "Kurdish Guerrillas Pose Growing Threat to Iraq; Rival Factions Unify, Gain Iran's Backing," Washington Post, February 19, 1988, p. A15.

39. "Iran Says It Has Iraqi Border City," Washington Post, March 18, 1998, p. A19.

40. Patrick E. Tyler, "Poison Gas Attack Kills Hundreds; Iran Accuses Iraq of Atrocity in Kurdish Region Near Border," Washington Post, March 24, 1988, p. Al.

41. Ibid.; emphasis added.

42. Theodore Stanger, "Massacre in Halabja;' Newsweek, April 4, 1988, p. 38; emphasis added.

43. Russell Watson and John Barry," Letting a Genie out of a Bottle," Newsweek, September 19, 1988, p. 30.

44. David B. Ottaway, "U.S. Decries Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons:'Grave Violation' of International Law Cited," Washington Post, March 24, 1988, p. A37.

45. Jim Hoagland, "Atrocity du jour:' Washington Post, March 26, 1988, p. A2.

46. The Halabja victims' blue lips were thought to be attributable to cyanide gas, which U.S. intelligence did not believe Iraq possessed. Public health experts say that other gases could have caused the discoloring as well. The vehemence of some Americans that the evidence was not definitive has persisted to this day. For example, Stephen C. Pelletiere, a former U.S. intelligence officer, and two colleagues carried out a study for the U.S. Army War College in which they argued "both sides" used chemical weapons in Halabja; Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II, and Leif R. Rosenberger, Iraqi Power and US. Security in the Middle East (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1990). In a more recent book Pelletiere wrote: "On May 23, in fighting over the town, gas was used by both sides. As a result scores of Iraqi Kurdish civilians were killed. It is now fairly certain that Iranian gas killed the Kurds"; Stephen C. Pelletiere, The Iran-Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum (NewYork: Praeger, 1992), pp. 136-137.

47. David Ottaway, "U.S. Decries Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons;'Grave Violations' of International Law Cited," Washington Post, March 24, 1988, p. A37.

48. David Ottaway. "In Mideast, Warfare with a New Nature;' I ashirlgton Post, April 5, 1988, p. Al.

49. The Gulf: The Battle, the War;' Iiashintrron Past, April 20, 1988, p. A20.

50. "Baghdad's Itepressi,we Measures Against the Kurds," cable from the joint Chiefs of Staff to the Defense Intelligence Agency, April 19, 1988, p. 2; reproduced as 00555 in National Security Archive, ed., Iraq,'ate.

51. Middle East Watch, Genocide and Iraq, p. 232.

52. Ibid., p. 245.

53. Ibid., p. 17.

54. Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, p. 187.

55. Ibid., pp. 193-194.

56. Ibid., p. 195.

57. Middle East Watch, Genocide and Iraq, pp. 252-258; Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, pp. 176-199.

58. In a brief item, the .Vetr Yirk Times picked up the claim; "Iraq Says It Routed Iranians and Kurds in Fight in Northeast;' New York Times, April 3, 1988, section 1, p. 14.

59. Elaine Sciolino,"Kurdish Chief Gains Support in U.S.Visit;' NewYorkTimes, June 22, 1988, p. A3. In fact,Talabani's alli.ince with Iran had predated Hussein's latest campaign of destruction.

60. State Department br cling, Federal News Service,June 15, 1988.

61. Senate Resolution 41)8, "Condemnation of the Use of Chemical Weapons by Iraq," Congressional Record, 100th Con4., 2nd sess., 1988, 134, pt. 95:58533.

62. Elaine Sciolino, "How the U.S. Cast off Neutrality in Gulf War," New York Times, April 24, 1988, sec. 4, p. 2.

63. Robert Pear, "Khomeini Accepts 'Poison' of Ending War with Iraq; U.N. Sending Mission," New YJrk Times, July 21, 988, p. Al.

64. Estimates of the total number of lives lost during the Iran-Iraq war range from 450,000 to 730,000 on the Iranian side and from 150,000 to 341),000 on the Iraqi side. Anthony H. Cordes- ntan and Abraham R. Wagner, Tlue Lessons o0lodern War, vol. 2: The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), p 3.

65. Alan Cowell, "A Gulf Truce Leaves Rebels in a Quandary," Neu' J rk Tunes, August 28, 1988, sec. 1, p. 15; Elaine Sciolino, "Iraqis Reported to Mount Drive Against Kurds," New Ynk Times, September 1, 1988, p. Al.

66. Kenneth Roth, Exeuuive Director, Human Rights Watch memo to officials in one European foreign ministry, Washington. I).C., on "Proposed ICJ Action Against Iraq on Basis of Genocide Convention." September 311, 1994, p. 0.

67. "More Chemical Attacks Reported," Neu, link limes, August 28, 1988, sec. 1, p. 15.

68. See text of S.2763, Contressional Record, 100th Cong., 2nd sess., 1988, 134, pt. 123:S12137- S12138.

69. Muhyeddin Abdula, one of the Kurdish nationals who staged the strike, told the New hink Times, "We could have done other things, maybe hijack an airplane, but we don't think that is nice"; Clyde F. Farnsworth and Irvin Molotsky, "Washington Talk; Briefing; To Hijack or Fast?" Neu' York'l'intes, September 19, 1988, p.A18.

70. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Chemical ft aports I'se in Kurdistan: Iraq's Final O_f- Jcnsive, 100th Cong., 2nd scss., 1988, S. Prt. 100-148:40.

71. Morton Abramowitz, -Swan Song for Iraq's Kurds?" top secret cable from Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence dud Research Morton Abramowitz to Secretary of State George Shultz, September 2, 1988. pp. 2-3; reproduced as 0(1625 in National Security Archive, ed., Iraq~ate.